The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures priority provides opportunities for all students to deepen their knowledge of Australia by engaging with the world’s oldest continuous living cultures. Through the Australian Curriculum, students will understand that contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are strong, resilient, rich and diverse.

Wild Cat Falling by Mudrooroo

Wild Cat Falling is the story of an Aboriginal youth, a ‘bodgie’ of the early sixties who grows up on the ragged outskirts of a country town, falls into petty crime, goes to gaol, and comes out to do battle once more with the society who put him there. Its publication in 1965 marked a unique literary event, for this was the first novel by any writer of Aboriginal blood to be published in Australia. As well, it is a remarkable piece of literature in its own right, expressing the dilemmas and conflicts of the young Aboriginal in modern Australian society with its memorable insight and stylishness.

ISBN: 9780207197321| RRP $17.99

Coonardoo by Katherine Prichard

A tough, uncompromising novel about the difficult love between a white man and a black woman. Coonardoo is the moving story of a young Aboriginal woman trained from childhood to be the housekeeper at Wytaliba station and, as such, destined to look after its owner, Hugh Watt. The love between Coonardoo and Hugh, which so shocked its readers when the book was first published in 1929, is never acknowledged and so, degraded and twisted in on itself, destroys not only Coonardoo, but also a community which was once peaceful.

ISBN: 9780732296933 | RRP $14.99

My People’s Dreaming by Max D. Harrison & Peter McConchie

A rare, personal insight into the traditional teachings of an elder of the Yuin people (South Coast, NSW). ‘Uncle’ Max, as he is widely known, has been sharing his cultural knowledge for over 30 years – in that time taking more than 6000 people from all walks of life onto country and explaining Aboriginal ways. this book’s content is drawn from extensive interviews with Uncle Max, who states that the teachings he reveals are ‘the living treasures of my life’. Uncle Max provides simple and clear understandings into Aboriginal culture for people from all nationalities. His teachings cover their Creation Dreaming, bush lore, foods, healing, laws and punishment, spirituality and the significance of relationship to land. In passing on traditional wisdom Uncle Max focuses on three truths: See the land…the beauty; Hear the land…the story; Feel the land…the spirit.

ISBN: 9780732298173| RRP $39.95

After Before Time by Robbi Neal

This moving collection of linked narratives centring around a remote Indigenous community has been inspired by real people and real events – the stories might read like fiction, but they are based on fact. The events they describe really happened. Each story is true to the person who inspired it and Robbi has been given permission to share these truths by writing them down, both by the person who influenced each story and by the Elders concerned.

ISBN: 9781460751459 | RRP $29.99

The Tears of Strangers by Stan Grant

In the 1980s Stan Grant would begin a career in journalism that would take him to a position of national prominence. As a reporter he has travelled all over the world, interviewing the likes of Arafat, Clinton, Blair, Adams and Saddam. He has seen despots and tin-pot revolutionaries; madmen and saints; the glory of the Olympics and the despair of hundreds of years of conflict in Ireland and the Middle East. Yet always he is a storyteller, just as his father’s father’s father was before him. And now he turns to the biggest story of his career: that of his people, the Wiradjuri.

ISBN: 9780732271527 | RRP $25.99

Talking to my Country by Stan Grant

Talking to my Country is that rare and special book that talks to every Australian about their country – what it is, and what it could be. It is not just about race, or about indigenous people but all of us, our shared identity. Direct, honest and forthright, Stan is talking to us all. He might not have all the answers but he wants us to keep on asking the question: how can we be better?

ISBN: 9781460751978 | RRP $29.99

Thicker Than Water by Cal Flyn

British journalist Cal Flyn was holidaying in her childhood home in the Highlands of Scotland, when she stumbled upon a dark family secret. To her horror, she discovered that her great-great-great uncle Angus McMillan, who had been mythologized as a great explorer and pioneer of early Australia, was in fact also the leader of a number of gruesome massacres of indigenous people.

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